Eyercize: Speed-Reading Practice

Details

Activity Description

Eyercise is a free Web-based tool that allows users to paste in any text and select options for displaying the text and timing the reading. There are no questions to check a reader’s comprehension, so the site is more for increasing reading rates.

According to the site, its purpose is to decrease sub-vocalization (vocalizing the words in your mind as you read) and regression (rereading), thus helping users increase reading rates.

Preparation

• Make sure the site is not blocked at your school.
• Practice using the site yourself before having students use it.
• Be sure that the tool works correctly in your Web browser and if it does not, download another browser. Since some schools do not allow teachers to add new software, you may have to contact your local IT person.

How-To

1. Prepare or find text (a document or a Web site) you want students to use.
2. Go to the Eyercize practice page and select the New button.
3. Copy the text from a document or Web site and paste it in the box. (If you do not see the text being highlighted and read in Internet Explorer, try Firefox .)
4. Then select “Now Read It!” at the bottom of the text box. All but part of one sentence will disappear.
5. Select the Play button.
6. Reading statistics will be provided.

There are several options for display of the text, which is shown with highlighted chunks when you select “Play.” You can change the number of words per minute, words per fixations (number of words per line of text), fixation points (number of words highlighted), font size, space between lines, and number of lines of text shown. There are also shortcut keys for using the tool.

To see information about a text that has been pasted in, select the See Statistics link, and a pop-up window will display the number of words the text contains as well as the number of high-frequency words and unique words.

Teacher Tips

This site is for individual use, such as in a lab setting. There is a small library of 22 texts, many of which would be difficult for literacy students and that contain with Canadian/British spellings of some words. To use any text, go to the practice page.

If you have trouble with using this tool in the Internet Explorer Web browser, try it using the Mozilla Firefox borwser. We had better luck with it using Firefox.

More Ways

Students could be assigned to use the site on a regular basis and could record their reading fluency progress (words per minute) on a chart.

Program Areas

• ESL: English as a Second Language

Levels

• Intermediate Low
• Intermediate High
• Advanced

Documents

• eyercize_FINAL.docx - Two screenshot images from eyercize.com showing speed reading training examples

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